This is about the bigger problem, really: how do you know where your purchases are coming from on the Amazon Marketplace, and do you know what you will be getting? I don't understand where all these company names come from; are they generated by a computer program? They are completely impenetrable.

Thinking about leaving Amazon Prime and maybe Amazon altogether.

With eBay, mostly it's one seller or company per item, sometimes I've bought parts that have an American name, email address, and shipping location on the selling page, but are answered with a Chinese name, email address and are shipped from China. But, it's less likely there.

“We’ve reached out to Amazon multiple times to inform them that these products are not legal for being sold in the US,” says Laine Matthews, the vice president for business at SureCall, an American signal booster manufacturer. “And it hasn’t yielded results.” Amazon removed some listings after WIRED reached out for comment this week.

That's not terribly surprising. I'd imagine that Amazon gets all sorts of communications from "competitors" claiming all sorts of things as to why the competing products shouldn't be sold. But once told by a disinterested third party, they began to check the claims.

Amazon haters may take that as a sign of indifference, but when it comes to curating a site where literally anything one might want can be sold (many of them fakes, knockoffs or outright theft), it will likely take more than one complaint to get them to take action.

About signal boosters, any recommendations for a travel friendly one for wireless hotpsot devices? I recently got a GPD MicroPC but it doesn't have built-in LTE like my Surface Go LTE so I've been using a Verizon 8800L hotspot when traveling. Even in some hotels, sticking it on a window sill didn't help much.

Interesting that the price of regulation is that high. Anyone with real experience in this area? It would seem like it would be a one time per model thing and that could be amortized quickly.

It's not just the price of regulation. Bootleg boosters get recycled under different brand names and model numbers so they're not actually being developed competitively, yet still swamping the market. Many of these "companies" probably exist only on paper and are really just resellers, so their operating expenses are virtually nil.

Just like YouTube, Facebook, etc., we're seeing here the limitations of trying to curate your system primarily through algorithms rather than with people.

For instance,

Quote:

Many sellers were appropriating reviews from other Amazon products, a common tactic used by sellers to make their goods appear more popular than they actually are. “This is the second time I purchased these curtains. I love them,” one reviewer supposedly said about a Phonelex booster, for example, that has since been removed. On the Amazon page for a since-deleted HJCINTL device, a number of reviews referenced replacement wheels for rolling suitcases. One five-star review of a SH·W·CELL booster said “I absolutely love my new bling case for my iPhone 7 plus!” The manufacturers themselves are difficult to reach, and don’t appear to have company websites.

would immediately send up massive red flags for any human reviewing a listing, but teaching an algorithm to parse reviews and recognize when they're obviously expropriated from random other listings is hard.

TMobile sent me a free TMobile branded signal booster probably about 8 years ago. Never asked for it back. It's sitting around somewhere... I guess they figured if I used it I would boost the signal in the area for everyone.

The 2nd iteration was tmobile sending out devices that connected to your home internet and would turn your.house jnto a mini cell tower, basically, using your.imternet as a backbone. Never got one of those, unclear if TMobile uses these.

Just like YouTube, Facebook, etc., we're seeing here the limitations of trying to curate your system primarily through algorithms rather than with people.

For instance,

Quote:

Many sellers were appropriating reviews from other Amazon products, a common tactic used by sellers to make their goods appear more popular than they actually are. “This is the second time I purchased these curtains. I love them,” one reviewer supposedly said about a Phonelex booster, for example, that has since been removed. On the Amazon page for a since-deleted HJCINTL device, a number of reviews referenced replacement wheels for rolling suitcases. One five-star review of a SH·W·CELL booster said “I absolutely love my new bling case for my iPhone 7 plus!” The manufacturers themselves are difficult to reach, and don’t appear to have company websites.

would immediately send up massive red flags for any human reviewing a listing, but teaching an algorithm to parse reviews and recognize when they're obviously expropriated from random other listings is hard.

Cheaper just to list everything and wait for someone to complain.

No, what we're seeing here is the conflict of interest for the people running these platforms. Amazon takes a cut of sales of counterfeit goods, YouTube makes money off of the ads shown on those recycled content videos from Blossom, and Facebook gets more engagement (and thus ad revenue) from intentionally incendiary or outright false news stories.

This is about the bigger problem, really: how do you know where your purchases are coming from on the Amazon Marketplace, and do you know what you will be getting? I don't understand where all these company names come from; are they generated by a computer program? They are completely impenetrable.

Thinking about leaving Amazon Prime and maybe Amazon altogether.

Every item on Amazon list both the seller and the shipper, though sometimes it can be hard to find. It'll say something like "Sold by impenetrable co and Fulfilled by Amazon" or "Ships from and sold by Amazon.com". Typically if I see this one "Ships from and sold by ripzuoff" I'm out.

“We’ve reached out to Amazon multiple times to inform them that these products are not legal for being sold in the US,” says Laine Matthews, the vice president for business at SureCall, an American signal booster manufacturer. “And it hasn’t yielded results.” Amazon removed some listings after WIRED reached out for comment this week.

That's not terribly surprising. I'd imagine that Amazon gets all sorts of communications from "competitors" claiming all sorts of things as to why the competing products shouldn't be sold. But once told by a disinterested third party, they began to check the claims.

Amazon haters may take that as a sign of indifference, but when it comes to curating a site where literally anything one might want can be sold (many of them fakes, knockoffs or outright theft), it will likely take more than one complaint to get them to take action.

Maybe, but that doesn't explain them disregarding reports from Wired and WSJ. At some point it stops being "we had too many incoming reports to investigate all of them" and starts being willful infringement.

We're well beyond the point where Amazon should be rethinking how they vet 3rd party merchants.

I had to engineer my home wireless network so WiFi calling would work well without drops. Been happy generally with that as a workaround but areas with poor coverage and no fixed internet options mean boosters. They are tricky to setup and engineer properly if you have a mix of towers and carriers and bands.

I do have a question. Just because these items are unlicensed does that actually make them illegal to sell or just illegal to use? I know that might be playing with splitting hairs but there are many mods for cars that are sold that are not street legal but have non-street usages that are legal such as show or legal racing. Some of these mods make it into cars that people regularly drive on the road and if inspected or are involved in a crash can make things difficult for the user. However that doesn't change that fact that these can still be sold, just not used on public roads.

I do have a question. Just because these items are unlicensed does that actually make them illegal to sell or just illegal to use? I know that might be playing with splitting hairs but there are many mods for cars that are sold that are not street legal but have non-street usages that are legal such as show or legal racing. Some of these mods make it into cars that people regularly drive on the road and if inspected or are involved in a crash can make things difficult for the user. However that doesn't change that fact that these can still be sold, just not used on public roads.

It’s technically illegal, just like setting up your own unlicensed FM radio transmitter on top of your house is illegal. So you’d probably receive a nastygram from the FCC if they were interested enough/happened to be looking.

I do have a question. Just because these items are unlicensed does that actually make them illegal to sell or just illegal to use? I know that might be playing with splitting hairs but there are many mods for cars that are sold that are not street legal but have non-street usages that are legal such as show or legal racing. Some of these mods make it into cars that people regularly drive on the road and if inspected or are involved in a crash can make things difficult for the user. However that doesn't change that fact that these can still be sold, just not used on public roads.

A non-street legal mod can have a legitimate use on a private track. There isn't a legitimate use for interfering boosters because there's essentially no such thing as a private track here.

I do have a question. Just because these items are unlicensed does that actually make them illegal to sell or just illegal to use? I know that might be playing with splitting hairs but there are many mods for cars that are sold that are not street legal but have non-street usages that are legal such as show or legal racing. Some of these mods make it into cars that people regularly drive on the road and if inspected or are involved in a crash can make things difficult for the user. However that doesn't change that fact that these can still be sold, just not used on public roads.

So you’re asking if it’s not legal to plug it into an electrical outlet in the United States, but is legal to possess one as long as you never plug it in, does it matter?

Because there is a difference between something that is legal to use on racetracks only and something that isn’t legal to USE anywhere in the country.

"The bigger issue for carriers is thermal noise, a byproduct the boosters give off."

Ok this could be in-band noise or out-of-band noise since the thermal noise is broadband. If it is out-of-band noise, do the boosters lack a passive filter prior to the antenna?

“If it’s really far away, then all of this noise is dissipated before it gets to the cell site.” Dissipated? Perhaps to a level where it isn't an issue.

"But if a booster is too close to a cell tower, that excess noise can cause massive interference, since it’s been amplified thousands of times."I assume the noise IS the interference. But why use a booster if you are near a tower?

I do have a question. Just because these items are unlicensed does that actually make them illegal to sell or just illegal to use? I know that might be playing with splitting hairs but there are many mods for cars that are sold that are not street legal but have non-street usages that are legal such as show or legal racing. Some of these mods make it into cars that people regularly drive on the road and if inspected or are involved in a crash can make things difficult for the user. However that doesn't change that fact that these can still be sold, just not used on public roads.

Legal devices are FCC approved. Many companies have been fined for selling products that are not approved. One that comes to mind is the Yupiterro MVT 7100 scanner since I own one.

I do have a question. Just because these items are unlicensed does that actually make them illegal to sell or just illegal to use? I know that might be playing with splitting hairs but there are many mods for cars that are sold that are not street legal but have non-street usages that are legal such as show or legal racing. Some of these mods make it into cars that people regularly drive on the road and if inspected or are involved in a crash can make things difficult for the user. However that doesn't change that fact that these can still be sold, just not used on public roads.

For any type of product that requires this form of certification from the FCC, it is illegal to sell any product of that type that isn't appropriately certified within the United States. In addition, the regulation states that a compliance information statement must be provided at the time of marketing or importation, so Amazon might actually be at fault here; for not ensuring that it is provided before displaying the product to a customer within the US.

“We’ve reached out to Amazon multiple times to inform them that these products are not legal for being sold in the US,” says Laine Matthews, the vice president for business at SureCall, an American signal booster manufacturer. “And it hasn’t yielded results.” Amazon removed some listings after WIRED reached out for comment this week.

That's not terribly surprising. I'd imagine that Amazon gets all sorts of communications from "competitors" claiming all sorts of things as to why the competing products shouldn't be sold. But once told by a disinterested third party, they began to check the claims.

Amazon haters may take that as a sign of indifference, but when it comes to curating a site where literally anything one might want can be sold (many of them fakes, knockoffs or outright theft), it will likely take more than one complaint to get them to take action.

That's the problem. Every other store has a responsibility for what they offer. But Amazon is "just a marketplace".

I do have a question. Just because these items are unlicensed does that actually make them illegal to sell or just illegal to use? I know that might be playing with splitting hairs but there are many mods for cars that are sold that are not street legal but have non-street usages that are legal such as show or legal racing. Some of these mods make it into cars that people regularly drive on the road and if inspected or are involved in a crash can make things difficult for the user. However that doesn't change that fact that these can still be sold, just not used on public roads.

Unlicensed is illegal to operate, illegal to sell, illegal to stock, illegal to import. Unlike offroad cars there is nowhere in the US where the FCC doesn't have dominion.

Just like YouTube, Facebook, etc., we're seeing here the limitations of trying to curate your system primarily through algorithms rather than with people.

For instance,

Quote:

Many sellers were appropriating reviews from other Amazon products, a common tactic used by sellers to make their goods appear more popular than they actually are. “This is the second time I purchased these curtains. I love them,” one reviewer supposedly said about a Phonelex booster, for example, that has since been removed. On the Amazon page for a since-deleted HJCINTL device, a number of reviews referenced replacement wheels for rolling suitcases. One five-star review of a SH·W·CELL booster said “I absolutely love my new bling case for my iPhone 7 plus!” The manufacturers themselves are difficult to reach, and don’t appear to have company websites.

would immediately send up massive red flags for any human reviewing a listing, but teaching an algorithm to parse reviews and recognize when they're obviously expropriated from random other listings is hard.

Cheaper just to list everything and wait for someone to complain.

The irony is that this fact doesn't prompt these companies to hire more humans (their business models don't allow for that), but instead it hastens the advent of AGI.

"[...]like our free Personal CellSpot with unique software that won’t interfere with the broader network,” a T-Mobile spokesperson said in a statement.

I took a look at this, and it's pretty limited use case with apparently only around 40-50ft range, no access restriction ability, and they still charge any used data to your account despite it coming over your connection. It's so unattractive that I'm actually kind of surprised there aren't more options from the carriers for rural areas now that I think about it. I have zero cell coverage at all in my area of New England, maybe a single bar of 2G to be found within a few miles, but I did finally get gigabit fiber installed and I'm only saturating it from time to time, not constantly. I've got a decent network setup with POE and could easily stick something into its own VLAN and shape it, and plenty of power redundancy. It seems like in principle there should be a win/win here, where I pay and cover a solid uplink, T-Mobile gets better coverage for anyone going by and a lot of costs covered, and I get something of use at much longer ranges then WiFi can easily handle thanks to being able to use licensed spectrum. It could easily be controlled centrally and use GPS to make sure it's only deployed within a fixed small area, and they'd know whether or not another was anywhere close. As it stands WiFi actually covers far more area and is much faster and doesn't suck up any data cap, so the target audience seems pretty small.

I wonder why carriers don't try to take more advantage of some of this, though maybe it comes down to institutional inertia. "Community" isn't exactly their watch word. It's too bad there's no non-profit organization with some licensed spectrum that could try to do better at organizing something like that across the country. People have tried to do a lot with mesh wifi, but there is a big difference between a circle a few hundred feet across at a time and one a few thousand in practicality, even if that's still vastly less then a real cell tower.

How do you think they’d feel if you decide to rescind your agreement, or stop paying you ur internet bills, or burn the house down and responsibility for rebuilding is tied up in court over liability, and now the restoring the coverage they needed for that whole area is up to their ability to negotiate with you, private citizen?

That sounds like a huge headache for a company to deal with rather than leasing access to institutional property or dedicated site rental.

With eBay, mostly it's one seller or company per item, sometimes I've bought parts that have an American name, email address, and shipping location on the selling page, but are answered with a Chinese name, email address and are shipped from China. But, it's less likely there.

They’re both only marginally better than buying from a guy selling boxes out of his van in a back alley.

But eBay does do a better job of giving information on the track-record of the seller. Amazon’s UI seems to be (intentionally or otherwise) obfuscating who you’re buying from.

Amazon is having the review issue quite frequently now. Basically, vendors seem to take a popular cheap device, and use that listing for something else. I’ve seen (and reported) for Lightning cables. Here’s one that was reported but Amazon still hasn’t taken down (it used watch screen protectors and other reviews): https://www.amazon.com/ONXIGLI-Certifie ... ne+&sr=8-5

This should be an article in itself, how often Amazon reviews are messed with.

I do have a question. Just because these items are unlicensed does that actually make them illegal to sell or just illegal to use? I know that might be playing with splitting hairs but there are many mods for cars that are sold that are not street legal but have non-street usages that are legal such as show or legal racing. Some of these mods make it into cars that people regularly drive on the road and if inspected or are involved in a crash can make things difficult for the user. However that doesn't change that fact that these can still be sold, just not used on public roads.

Unlicensed is illegal to operate, illegal to sell, illegal to stock, illegal to import. Unlike offroad cars there is nowhere in the US where the FCC doesn't have dominion.

Not strictly true. There are bands allocated to unlicensed utilization, but devices SOLD for those bands must be certified not cause significant RFI outside of those frequencies allowed for spurious transmission. WIFI, Bluetooth, baby monitors, cordless phones, RC toys are a few examples of legal unlicensed band use. Naturally any device for licensed band use must be certified to be legally sold.

It is illegal to use devices that cause intentional interference in bands you're not licensed for regardless of license or even in the bands you are licensed for if you're not the sole licensee.

However, it's not actually illegal to own transmitters capable of causing interference in any band, so long as they are not used to cause interference. Or in the case of jamming equipment, never activated at all. The FCC doesn't bother to police tinkerers and experimenters so long as they behave themselves. See Part 97 (amateur radio service rules and regulations) for one such legal reference on licensed and unlicensed band use and experimentation.

I really think Amazon is on thin ice here. I doubt the FCC is going to be impressed with the excuse that Amazon is "just a marketplace" like the local newspaper. There's such a thing called "nuisance laws" where marketplaces that don't clean up their acts can be shut down. Granted that's local, but the FCC is all about limiting "nuisance" on the airwaves, that's why the commission exists in the first place. The Internet is automatically under federal jurisdiction as well, so... it'll be interesting if the FCC can force them (and other market places) to clean up.

“We’ve reached out to Amazon multiple times to inform them that these products are not legal for being sold in the US,” says Laine Matthews, the vice president for business at SureCall, an American signal booster manufacturer. “And it hasn’t yielded results.” Amazon removed some listings after WIRED reached out for comment this week.

That's not terribly surprising. I'd imagine that Amazon gets all sorts of communications from "competitors" claiming all sorts of things as to why the competing products shouldn't be sold. But once told by a disinterested third party, they began to check the claims.

Amazon haters may take that as a sign of indifference, but when it comes to curating a site where literally anything one might want can be sold (many of them fakes, knockoffs or outright theft), it will likely take more than one complaint to get them to take action.

That's the problem. Every other store has a responsibility for what they offer. But Amazon is "just a marketplace".

That's an excellent point. If a significant percentage of the products sold on your site are your own products, then you are no longer "just a marketplace". Especially when products sold by 3rd parties and products sold by Amazon are nearly indistinguishable while shopping until you go to actually purchase, I think they should lose that protection.

I'm fine with how eBay has operated (historically), because it is quite clear that I am not looking at eBay products when shopping there, and it is also a lot clearer what 3rd party is selling the products I'm looking at. So as a counter example I would understand a marketplace defense from them.

Many sellers were appropriating reviews from other Amazon products, a common tactic used by sellers to make their goods appear more popular than they actually are. “This is the second time I purchased these curtains. I love them,” one reviewer supposedly said about a Phonelex booster, for example, that has since been removed.

It's interesting to see how long it will take Amazon to act on them loosing their reputation.Well, their reputation is almost zero as far as I am concerned.A few years ago I dropped eBay for Amazon because I wanted stuff I can rely on. Well I stopped going to Amazon, back to eBay because eBay is cheaper and I can't rely on Amazon either.M.

This is about the bigger problem, really: how do you know where your purchases are coming from on the Amazon Marketplace, and do you know what you will be getting? I don't understand where all these company names come from; are they generated by a computer program? They are completely impenetrable.

Thinking about leaving Amazon Prime and maybe Amazon altogether.

With eBay, mostly it's one seller or company per item, sometimes I've bought parts that have an American name, email address, and shipping location on the selling page, but are answered with a Chinese name, email address and are shipped from China. But, it's less likely there.

Ebay is worse. My recommendation is buying from manufacturer's site links.

The FCC hasn’t really done anything for the airwaves under Trump. There is also a similar HUGE problem with uncertified Ham radios being able to be bought on the cheap from Amazon causing huge amounts of bleed over and interference in other frequencies which is a no no. Yet not a single thing has been done about them either.